Brandon's Buzz

November kicks off with a bang, as country’s hottest-selling lass is back with her hotly-anticipated third album, which has her working with some eyebrow-raising collaborators. Dig in:

 

Pop music’s venerable Now series is back this week with a pair of new entries, as recent radio hits from A’s beloved Black Eyed Peas (their record-breaking number one smash “I Gotta Feeling”), Jordin Sparks (the terrific “Battlefield”), Katy Perry (“Waking Up in Vegas,” a guilty pleasure if I ever heard one), Michael Franti and Spearhead (their cheeky top 40 breakthrough “Say Hey (I Love You)”), and others punctuate Now That’s What I Call Music, Vol. 32; and a fascinating cross-section of unforgettable club smashes from the past three decades turn up on Now That’s What I Call Dance Classics!, including any number of one hit wonders from the likes of The Weather Girls (“It’s Raining Men,” with the amazing Martha Wash blowing the roof off the joint), CeCe Peniston (“Finally”), Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock (their oft-sampled touchstone “It Takes Two”), and others. This is all well and good, mind you, and will probably find its way into my collection, since I have a profound weakness for this kind of thing. But please don’t tell me I’m the only one who is shattered by the Now folks’ decision to omit Everything But the Girl’s legendary 1996 monster hit “Missing” from this tracklist. Gotta tell you, guys: Todd Terry’s brilliant decision to lay down a furiously insistent house beat just beneath Tracey Thorn’s abominably sexy croon made for what I call a dance classic every damn day o’ the week. Recognize.

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6:48 pm:   At long last, the finale is here! 12 minutes and counting!

6:49 pm:  Anybody out there willing to take a chance and call this race right now?  ‘Cause I tell you what, I really have no clue who’s gonna win.  Who knew Banshee Boy and Choirboy would end up being so evenly matched as the last ones standing?

6:51 pm: A’s take:  “Adam has a bigger persona, but that doesn’t mean he’s necessarily better.”  Well said, honey!

6:53 pm: So, I’ve heard that, among others, the celebrity guests tonight include my beloved Cyndi Lauper, Queen Latifah, and Lionel Richie.  But will anyone be able to top the surprise appearances by Ryan Tedder and my all-time fave George Michael on last year’s finale?

6:55 pm: A is stunned to learn that Kris is a choirboy!  I need to teach that boy how to read Entertainment Weekly!

6:58 pm: Anyone enjoy “Glee” as much as I did last night?  That show was infinitely more fun than “Idol,” as it turned out.  I should have live-blogged that!

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6:37 pm (NOTE: all times central): No agricultural emergencies delaying my progress this year. We’re actually startin’ early!

6:39 pm:  Last year’s “Idol” live blog was the first thing that really put Brandon’s Buzz on the map in terms of garnering some attention from the online world, so I’m very excited about tonight!

6:44 pm: Assuming that Adam was always a slam dunk to make the finale (and Paula predicted it twelve full weeks ago, so there you have it), I still think an Adam / Alison faceoff would have provided the most bang for our entertainment buck.  But I still think we’re in for a riveting evening of music, madness, and mascara tonight.

6:46 pm:  Let’s set up the cast of characters.  In one corner, we have Adam Lambert.

6:47 pm:  Because Adam screeches, shrieks, screams, wails, and just generally irritates the piss out of me, he will be known tonight as Banshee Boy.

6:48 pm: Adam is a glam rocker following the obvious David Bowie template — at least visually — but when he opens his mouth, he sounds like the love child that Robert Plant and Siouxsie Sioux might have created in an ill-fated night of passion.  (You might think I mean that as a compliment, since I rather like and admire both of those people, but I really don’t.)

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Damn, it’s good to have you back, girlfriend.

After an excruciating detour into a brand of angst-drenched filth that wouldn’t pass muster in a fourteen-year-old wallflower’s tear-stained journal, it pleases me no end to report that the divine Kelly Clarkson — the first and, Carrie notwithstanding, still the best American Idol — is back on top and better than ever with her spectacular fourth album, All I Ever Wanted. A blue million miles from the stem-to-stern maudlin misfire that was 2007’s My December, Wanted is a heady mix of fast fun and simmering slow burns which zips along at such a breakneck pace that you’ll scarcely have time to do anything but hit the repeat all button and dive in all over again.

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Regular readers of this blog may or may not know that once upon a time, I was writing a novel.  (I say was because, even though I often refer back to it in my mind’s eye — twenty or thirty times a day, easy — and have come to quite enjoy torturing myself by toying with the notion of revisiting it in a serious way — an idea that I’ll one day make a concrete reality — I haven’t set finger one upon it in years.)  The book is about a hundred different things — and is driven by and populated with every bit as byzantine a constellation of backstories and bystanders as you’d reasonably expect from an author who is also a soap fan of nearly three decades — but, primarily, the book is about a guy.  Jeremy.  Early 30s.  Recovering alcoholic.  Hasn’t spoken to his brother in a decade over a ridiculously lopsided family inheritance which failed to break in his favor.  Doesn’t know how to admit it, but is still madly, hopelessly, irrevocably in love with the very first object — a flaxen-haired, brutally forthright gem of a gal — of his intensely loyal affection.

It may not make a hell of a lot of sense here in the boiled-down synopsis (and, truth be told, it may not make much more sense in the actual book), but Jeremy was once a successful trial lawyer in Boston, and is now a warbling piano player in a smoky Florida nightclub.  (It’s a long road from there to here, that seemingly wonky transition, and the minutiae therein aren’t terribly relevant to the particular yarn I’m spinning for you now, so let’s just go with this:  as increasingly detached as the repetitive tedium of his daily existence as an attorney made him feel, that’s how increasingly fulfilled Jeremy is by the fresh thrill of plugging his mind and heart and hands into the concrete joy of creation, and of imagination, as a piano man.)

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